CHAPTER 34
Dealing with Power and Politics in Project Management
Project management is more than techniques to complete projects on time, within scope, and within budget. Organizations by their very nature are political, so effective project managers need to become politically sensible. Astute “project politicians” assess the environment and develop an effective political plan that addresses the power structure and activities in an organization. They seek out a guiding coalition of supporters and guide them to take positive action toward desired results.
To be ignorant about political processes can be costly to the organization and the individual. Instead of lamenting a failed project, program, or initiative, it is possible to learn a proven approach to power and politics that optimizes project success. The approach discussed below can help turn potential victim scenarios into win–win political victories.
ADOPT A LEADERSHIP ROLE
Sooner or later all professionals find a leadership role thrust upon them, a team to lead, or a project to accomplish with others. Opportunity comes to those leaders who understand and meld scope, schedule, and cost management processes with skills in selling, negotiating, managing change, and politicking. This should not be viewed as a burden, but as the chance to become a complete project manager.1
A common theme for success or failure of any organizational initiative is building a guiding coalition—a bonding of sponsors and influential people who support the activity. This support, or lack thereof, represents a powerful force either toward or away from the goal. Embrace and develop negotiating skills, employing passion, patience, and persistence. Moderate success may be achieved without widespread political support, but continuing long-term business impact requires alignment of power factors within the organization. A key factor is leadership that guides organizations to be more project-friendly, which in turn leads to greater value-added, economically viable results.
FIGURE 34-1. FOUR FACTORS IN BEHAVIORAL CHANGE
Organizations attempting projects across functions, businesses, and geographies increasingly encounter complexities that threaten their success. A common response is to set up control systems that inhibit the very results intended. This happens when we inhibit the free flow of information and impose unnecessary constraints.
By contrast, taming chaos and managing complexity are possible when leaders establish a strong sense of purpose among all stakeholders, develop shared vision and values, and adopt patterns of behavior that promote cooperation across cultural boundaries. These processes represent major change for many organizations.
An organic approach to project management acknowledges that people work best in an open environment that supports their innate talents, strengths, and desires to contribute. Many organizational environments thwart rather than support these powerful forces in their drive to complete projects on time, within budget, and according to specifications. Look for behavioral patterns and incentives that naturally guide people toward a desired result rather than implement onerous controls. Results are similar to those of a successful gardener: combining the right conditions with the right ingredients creates a bountiful harvest. By ensuring that leadership, learning, means, and motivation are all present in appropriate amounts, the right people can employ efficient processes in an effective environment (Figure 34-1).
Too late, people often learn the power of a nonguiding coalition. This happens when a surprise attack results in a resource getting pulled, a project manager getting reassigned, or a project getting cancelled. Getting explicit commitments up front, the more public the better, is important to implementing any activity. It also takes follow-through to maintain the commitment. But if commitment was not obtained initially, it is not possible to maintain throughout. It all starts by investigating attitudes and assessing how things get done.2
VIEWS OF POLITICS
Albert Einstein said, “Politics is more difficult than physics.” The challenge is to create an environment for positive politics. That is, people operate with a win–win attitude. All actions are out in the open. People demonstratively work hard toward the common good. Outcomes are desirable or at least acceptable to all parties concerned. This is the view of power and politics espoused in this chapter.
One’s attitude toward political behavior becomes extremely important. Options are to be naive, to be a shark that uses aggressive manipulation to reach the top, or to be politically sensible. According to Jeffrey Pinto,3 politically sensible individuals enter organizations with few illusions about how many decisions are made. They understand, either intuitively or through their own experience and mistakes, that politics is a facet of behavior that happens in all organizations. People who are politically sensible neither shun nor embrace predatory politics. “Politically sensible individuals use politics as a way of making contacts, cutting deals, and gaining power and resources for their departments or projects to further corporate, rather than entirely personal, ends.”3
To make politics work for you, it is important to understand the levels of power in leading a project. As depicted in Figure 34-2:
• Control or authority power is the one most prevalent but not one that project managers can rely on with any degree of certainty in most organizations.
• Influence or status depends on referent (or appealing to others) powers:
• Be willing to challenge the status quo.
• Create and communicate a vision.
• Empower others.
• Model desired behavior.
• Encourage others.
• Appreciation means having awareness of areas of uncertainty outside the realm of control or influence that could nevertheless impact project success. For instance, I cannot know when an upper manager will dictate a change in the project or a system will crash, but I can appreciate that these things happen and can provide placeholders with contingencies for them in the project plan.
Power and politics are unpopular topics with many people. That ambivalent attitude hampers their ability to become skilled and effective. A negative reaction to the word political could be a barrier to success. Often, when people feel there is too little power available to them, they resort to a “victim mode” of feeling powerless. Yet the savvy project manager can develop sources of power by remaining alert for opportunities to lead or assist. One high-level management team almost ceased to function when the general manager could not be present at the last moment for a critical meeting. The facilitator had to help the team members realize this was their opportunity to build a power base among themselves and to take action that would present a united front when they next met with the general manager.
Lack of demonstrated power is also an opportunity to exercise personal power. Many people shine when they jump in and do something when they first see the opportunity, asking forgiveness later if necessary instead of waiting for permission.
ASSESS THE POLITICAL ENVIRONMENT
A big pitfall is not taking the time to fully assess what we are up against—that is, learning how to operate effectively in a political environment.
FIGURE 34-2. TYPES OF STAKEHOLDER POWER
What is a political environment? Being political is not a bad thing when trying to get good things done for the organization. A political environment is the power structure, formal and informal. It is how things get done within the day-to-day processes as well as in a network of relationships. Power is the capacity each individual possesses to translate intention into reality and sustain it. Organizational politics is the exercise or use of power. The world of physics revolves around power. Because project management is all about getting results, it stands to reason that power is required. Political savvy is a vital ingredient in every project manager’s toolkit.
Understand the power structure in the organization. A view from outer space would not show the lines that separate countries, organizations, functional areas, or other political boundaries. The lines are figments that exist in our minds or on paper but not in reality. Clues to a power structure may come from an organizational chart, but how things get done goes far beyond that. Influence exists in people’s hearts and minds, where power derives more from legitimacy than from authority. Its presence is shown by the implementation of decisions.
Table 34-1 describes the various sources of power and their effects.
Legitimacy is what people confer on their leaders. Being authentic and acting with integrity are ways a leader behaves in relations to others, but legitimacy is the response from others. Position power may command respect, but ultimately how a leader behaves is what gains wholehearted commitment from followers. Legitimacy is the real prize, for it completes the circle. When people accept and legitimize the power of a leader, greater support gets directed toward the outcome; conversely, less resistance is present.
Source: Hans J. Thamhain, “Leadership,” in The AMA Handbook of Project Management, 3rd edition (New York: AMACOM, 2010), p. 166.
TABLE 34-1. THE PROJECT MANAGER’S BASES OF INFLUENCE
People have always used organizations to amplify human power. Art Kleiner4 states a premise that in every organization there is a core group of key people—the “people who really matter”—and the organization continually acts to fulfill the perceived needs and priorities of this group.
Kleiner suggests numerous ways to determine who these powerful people are. People who have power are at the center of the organization’s informal network. They are symbolic representatives of the organization’s direction. They got this way because of their position, their rank, and their ability to hire and fire others. Maybe they control a key bottleneck or belong to a particular influential subculture. They may have personal charisma or integrity. These people take a visible stand on behalf of the organization’s principles and engender a level of mutual respect. They dedicate themselves as leaders to the organization’s ultimate best interests and set the organization’s direction. As they think or act or convey an attitude, so does the rest of the organization. Their characteristics and principles convey what an organization stands for. These are key people who, when open to change, can influence an organization to move in new directions or, when not open to change, keep it the same.
Another way to recognize key people is to look for decision makers in the mainstream business of the organization. They may be aligned with the headquarters culture, ethnic basis, or gender, or speak the native language, or be part of the founding family. Some questions to ask about people in the organization are: Whose interests did we consider in making a decision? Who gets things done? Who could stop something from happening? Who are the “heroes”?
Power is not imposed by boundaries. Power is earned, not demanded. Power can come from position in the organization, what a person knows, a network of relationships, and possibly the situation, meaning a person could be placed in a situation that has a great deal of importance and focus in the organization.
A simple test for where power and influence reside is to observe who people talk to or go to with questions or for advice. Whose desk do people meet at? Who has a long string of voice or email messages? Whose calendar is hard to get onto?
One of the most reliable sources of power when working across organizations is the credibility a person builds through a network of relationships. It is necessary to have credibility before a person can attract team members, especially the best people, who are usually busy and have many other things competing for their time. Credibility comes from relationship building in a political environment.
In contrast, credibility gaps occur when previous experience did not fulfill expectations or when perceived abilities to perform are unknown and therefore questionable. Organizational memory has a lingering effect—people long remember what happened before and do not give up those perceptions without due cause. People more easily align with someone who has the power of knowledge credibility, and relationship credibility is something only the individual can build or lose.
Power and politics also address the priority assigned to project management’s triple constraints—outcome, schedule, and cost. If the power in an organization resides in marketing, where trade shows rule new product introductions, meeting market window schedules becomes most important. A research and development (R&D)–driven organization tends to focus on features and new technology, often at the expense of schedule and cost. Low-cost market leaders obsess about cost controls.
CREATE A POLITICAL PLAN
A quest to optimize results in a convoluted organizational environment requires a political management plan. This is probably a new addition to the project manager’s arsenal. Elements of a political plan may have been included in a communications plan. To conduct a systematic approach to power and politics, a key element is to prepare a stakeholder analysis. One quickly realizes that it is impossible to satisfy everyone and that the goal might become to keep everyone minimally annoyed and to use a “weighted dissatisfaction” index.5
Positioning
Another element of a political plan is positioning. For instance, where a project office is located in an organization affects its power base. The concept of “centrality” says to locate it in a position central and visible to other corporate members, where it is central to or important for organizational goals.6 HP’s project management initiative started in corporate engineering, a good place to be because HP was an engineering company. That put the initiative into the mainstream instead of in a peripheral organization where its effectiveness and exposure may be more limited. Likewise, a project office for the personal computer division reported through a section manager to the R&D functional manager. This again reflected centrality since R&D at that time drove product development efforts.
Most important decisions in organizations involve the allocation of scarce resources. Position and charter a project office with a key role in decision making that is bound to the prioritization and distribution of organizational resources. Be there to help, not to make decisions. Reassure managers that they are not losing decision-making power but gaining an ally to facilitate and implement decisions.
An individual contributor, project leader, or project office of one needs to consider where he or she is located in an organization in order to have a greater impact, make a larger contribution, get promoted, or generally gain more power and influence. Doing service projects in a field office for a manufacturing and sales-oriented company is less likely to attract attention than a product marketing person doing new product introduction projects in the factory. Seek out projects that address critical factors facing the organization. In essence, address in a political plan how important the project is to the organization, where it resides in having access to key decision makers, and what support resources are available to the project.
Driving Change
Implicit in changing a dysfunctional political environment into a successful project-based organization is the notion that change is inevitable. The use of power and politics becomes a mechanism for driving change. Politics is a natural consequence of the interaction among organizations, functional areas, teams, and individuals. View political skills as an important tool and the need for a change as an opportunity to contribute, using those skills.
A well-known political tactic that enhances status is to demonstrate expertise and earn legitimacy. Developing proficiency and constantly employing new best practices around program and project management, combined with some of the above tactics in the political plan, plus communicating and promoting the services and successes achieved, help a project gain status in the organization. This factor is a recurring theme in many case studies.
Pinto says, “Any action or change effort initiated by members of an organization that has the potential to alter the nature of current power relationships provides a tremendous impetus for political activity.”7
A business case can be made that changes are usually necessary within organizations that set out to conquer new territory through projects and project teams, often guided by a project office. The role of upper managers may need to change in order to support these new efforts. However, it takes concerted effort, often on the part of project managers who are closest to the work, to speak the truth to upper managers who have the authority and power about what needs to happen.8 The change may be revolutionary and require specific skills and process steps to be effective.
Here is a suggested outline or template for crafting a political plan:
• Assessment of environment
• Description of political “jungle”
• Stakeholder roles
• Potential issues
• Approach to stakeholders and issues
• Strategic response, such as positioning and steps
• Action plans
CONCLUSION
Recognize that organizations are political. A commitment to positive politics is an essential attitude that creates a healthy, functional organization. Create relationships that are win–win (all parties gain), where actual intentions are out in the open (not hidden or distorted), and trust is the basis for ethical transactions. Determining what is important to others and providing value to recipients are currencies that project leaders can exchange with other people. Increased influence capacity comes from inquiry about concerns important to others, advocacy of clear arguments and action plans, and communicating through all appropriate means. Effective project and program managers embrace the notion that they are salespersons, politicians, and negotiators. Take the time to learn the skills of these professions and apply them daily.
Embrace the role of leader and change agent. Exercise political savvy. Successfully navigate political minefields by exercising these traits:
• Act from personal strengths, such as expert, visionary, or process owner.
• Develop a clear, convincing, and compelling message and make it visible to others.
• Use your passion that comes from deep values and beliefs about the work (if these are not present, then find a different program to work on).
• Be accountable for success of the organization, and ask others to do the same.
• Get explicit commitments from people to support the goals of the program so that they are more likely to follow through.
• Take action—first to articulate the needs, then help others understand the change, achieve small wins, and get the job done.
• Tap the energy that comes from the courage of your convictions . . . and from being prepared.
Believe in and apply techniques for political coalition building. The extent that powerful organizational forces are on board (or not) enables a project to go ahead in a big way, a project to be modified or downscaled, or for people to quit and move on to something easier.
Between today’s situation and a desired state lies a long road of organizational change and the required politicking. Project managers who are skilled at the political arts of communication, persuasion, change management, and negotiation—and who also are authentic and trustworthy—can help their organizations make this transition.
DISCUSSION QUESTIONS
What cultural context or organizational factors influence the development of a political plan? For example: open, enlightened, closed, exclusive, stimulating, supportive, productive, chaotic, messy, difficult to navigate, and so on.
How will you address these factors (or forces)?
Where can you find opportunities to develop your political skills?
REFERENCES
1 Randall Englund and Alfonso Bucero, The Complete Project Manager’s Toolkit (Vienna, VA: Management Concepts Press, 2012).
2 Robert Graham and Randall Englund, Creating an Environment for Successful Projects, 2nd edition (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2004); Roger Lewin and Birute Regine, The Soul at Work: Listen, Respond, Let Go; Embracing Complexity Science for Business Success (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2000); and Jeffrey K. Pinto, Peg Thomas, Jeffrey Trailer, Todd Palmer, and Michele Govekar, Project Leadership (Newtown Square, PA: Project Management Institute, 1998).
3 Jeffrey K. Pinto, Power and Politics in Project Management (Upper Darby, PA: Project Management Institute, 1996).
4 Art Kleiner, Who Really Matters: the Core Group Theory of Power, Privilege, and Success (New York: Currency Doubleday, 2003).
5 Pinto, Power and Politics.
6 Ibid.
7 Ibid.
8 Randall Englund, Robert Graham, and Paul Dinsmore, Creating the Project Office: A Manager’s Guide to Leading Organizational Change (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass Publishers, 2003), pp. 66–73 (contains a more thorough discussion about speaking truth to power).